Maxing Score

[Joking_Phantom]

After lucking out on my 4th run and making it to the Surface exit only to be dismayed by not having a single weapon to break the access shell, I took a few hours of research and many attempts at the same seed, and I managed to make it out with a flight hacker build.

Now I'm interested in maxing out my score.

I ran a few regressions on the "Win Speed" score category and came up with a power formula of approximately Win Speed=50,000,000/(# of turns passed).

I've got a few questions for the more knowledgable:

1. Formulas for "High Alert Combat Kills, "Robots Destroyed," and "Value Destroyed"? Disabling random machines on the first level turned up 70 score over 3 machines, but on my winning run I ended up with 3750 destroyed, which is interesting. I do remember running Trojan(Detonate) a few times. What's valuable to blow up as I make my way to the surface? Does blowing up terrain count too, or only machines? I'm assuming the "High Alert Combat Kills" requires the security level to be at least 3 or something - if so Alert(Purge) should not be run if I want more score? I'm trying to balance out winning fast with max destruction, but destroying things usually slows you down - either building up firepower on yourself, or amassing a large army that is also slow. It's either I run as fast as possible to Armory to get the best datajacks, or I start amassing firepower at the first Factory floor and only proceed upwards when my core is in danger.

2. What's the maximum bonus event score I can get? I've determined that Zion, Data Miner are on (6/7) Lower Caves, Warlord and Zhirov are on (4/5) Upper caves. But unfortunately, Extension and Armory are on 3/4. I think Armory is the optimal choice, but that means it has to be on 3 or I skip Zhirov or Warlord. Being on 3 skips Testing, and I guess Extension -> Hub_04 can probably be ignored. 2 Quarantine and Section 7 looks mandatory to visit because of the massive amounts of points you can score here. Finally, going to Command is probably the way to go because blowing up Main.C would be a great number of points. If anyone could give me a clearer picture on what bonus score events are mutually exclusive and the probably large number of events I've missed, that would be great.

3. Core Reset - Any score events that require having used it? Ideally I'd like to save it until I reach the Command/Hub_0 Surface exit, but I know that certain dialogue options require it. The knowledge of alien artifacts and their position is a nice small bonus, but not really necessary, especially if I just play the same seed to know where stuff is. It seems that alien artifact score only requires using a unique artifact once too, which is nice on the inventory requirements.

Side note - I think I noticed Section 7 entrance didn't show up on Access(Branch) or Access(Main). Is this accurate, and are there other exits that don't actually show up on terminal hacks? I was feeling paranoid after not being able to find Armory on 3rd, only to notice it showed up on 4th in my world map. Kinda wish I could hover over those map icons for a map name.

[Joshua]

1. Formulas for "High Alert Combat Kills, "Robots Destroyed," and "Value Destroyed"? Disabling random machines on the first level turned up 70 score over 3 machines, but on my winning run I ended up with 3750 destroyed, which is interesting.

I believe Robots Destroyed is a flat number of points per Robot. I think Kyzrati stated Value Destroyed is a flat amount for all machines (is it 25 each?) plus the robot number for each robot (e.g. each G-34 Grunt destroyed is worth 34 value). I don't think terrain counts. I don't know whether robots destroyed by reprogrammed traps or by hacking count.

2. What's the maximum bonus event score I can get?

I believe it's upwards of 30k points

Spoiler

if you destroy as many bosses as possible.

[close]

I can't comment more since I haven't done it and major spoilers are involved.

Spoiler

3. Core Reset - Any score events that require having used it?

This is beyond my knowledge.

Side note - I think I noticed Section 7 entrance didn't show up on Access(Branch) or Access(Main). Is this accurate, and are there other exits that don't actually show up on terminal hacks? I was feeling paranoid after not being able to find Armory on 3rd, only to notice it showed up on 4th in my world map. Kinda wish I could hover over those map icons for a map name.

I believe there is at least one other that's not in the terminal database, possibly more. However there seem to be other ways to get the locations.

[close]

[DDarkray]

I haven't fully investigated on this, but here's what I have observed:

Points for "Robots Destroyed" is always: 5 * (# of robots destroyed), regardless of what kind of robots they are. So if you destroyed 100 robots in total, you'll gain 500 points.

I haven't investigated the points gained for "Value Destroyed" in regard to destroyed machines. But what I know is that the points gained for destroying robots is based on the number of the robots' name. So if you destroy a g-34 grunt, you'll gain 34 points. If you destroy a w-16 watcher, you'll gain 16 points. If you destroy k-01 serf, you'll gain......1 point.

Destroying terrains such as walls and earth do not give any point.

High alert combat kills, I haven't investigated at all.

[kiedra]

Sorry I didn't read all of what you've posted, because of some potential spoilers I wanted to avoid, but I've been thinking a bit about maxing out the score lately, so my thoughts on it hopefully help out. I can't say much about speedrunning, but your formula for the bonus points seems about right - to reach 100k you'd have to get it done in 500 turns, which is hard, but doable I guess. You'd have to get really lucky on the floor layout though, and finding the right things along the way (like flight units, scanners, other prop for armor etc). While there is still some other bonus points to be found, they are relatively small. In one of my recent runs (105k), most of the score was earned through killing robots (value points) and the bonus for high alert combat kills.

What basically happened in that run - I kept the alert level under control most of the time (ranging between 1-4 I'd guess), I did however make a huge mistake in -2/testing when taking out a garrison. It got pretty messy really quickly, big fight with several groups joining, me getting scanned by a researcher, in the end that was probably too much for MAIN.C and it triggered high security. I managed to get out hoping I could find a quick terminal in Access and hopefully let things calm down, but when spawning next to a behemoth AND a garrison nearby, getting back conrol of the alert level was near impossible. At this point all hell broke loose, I have never seen so many enemies before. My build allowed for one-shotting (if lucky on crits) a full ARC-squad, but with the sheer amount of enemies coming in, there was nearly not enough time to pick up some matter. I even started killing scavs for tractor beams instead of the usual matter, but with entire rooms full of items I'd have to move 20 tiles just to pick it up. I still tried exploring, although moving 3 tiles and fighting another 10 enemies does not really count for that - the main issue was, this put me out of position most of the time, which led to way more attrition than neccessary. What I'm trying to say is, in a 1-wide hallway, preferably as long as possible, I could have survived much much longer, which is basically my suggestion as of now if you just wanna go for score.

Theoretically you can do this on any floor, but -1 is probably the best, because you have the highest amount of slots, which allows for more guns and more importantly lots of useful utilities (armor, shields, cyclers, crit), not to mention that enemies will be of the highest level, which grants a higher score getting rid of them. I'd say try to get to Access with maximum possible Alert level control to minimize attrition and allow for lots of spare parts found along the way, accumulate a large inventory of important spare parts like shields and crit guns, explore the map to find a good place to do the fighting and then piss off MAIN.C and trigger high alert. I would guess I've killed around 200 bots in -1, being prepared and not having to leave a favorable position, you can easily add another zero to that number. What I don't know is whether things may even get worse from here, meaning more difficult enemies (immune to crit like those prototypes) or launcher dudes blowing up the hallway. We could ask Kyzrati, but I'm sure he'd say we should find out on our own . Feel free to look at the scoresheet either way, maybe you find some numbers that help you out.

[Kyzrati]

Thanks for the info, I was wondering how you'd farmed that, and what went wrong on -1, if anything . There was speculation as to whether you were trying to win, or just didn't quite make it--now we know! You certainly racked up a lot of points for all the high-sec kills.

[kiedra]

By the time I reached -2, I knew it's gonna be a good run, so I really did wanna get out, but that stupid move of mine at the garrison made it significantly harder. On the other hand, this is where Cogmind really shines and is quite unique I guess, even though the situation is absolutely hopeless, there is no reason to give up, so I kept shooting. I even did crit kill ARCs before they opened, but that barely made a difference, because they just kept coming. My Cog was insanely tanky too, 50% shield (plus 2x backup), phase shifters, a full transporter load of medium cesium armor and lots of guns. It was the first time that I actually missed the hunters too, because they drop KE's, but all I got in those ARCs were grunts, melees and those imps, so rebuilding was kinda rough. My core was still fine (around 1000/1600) when I finally ran out of guns, but once you lose your crit (and penetration) potential, which those lasers just don't have, things go south quickly. I really shoulda made some screenshots, but I didn't, because I'm an idiot and even though the score was fairly high, it just feels sorta not right, because the main goal after all, is to get the heck out. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun in that run

[Joking_Phantom]

All right, I've got more after a second run on easiest mode (Beta 3.1):

Floors 10-8:

Spoiler

Secure Large and Medium storage units, pretty obvious.

Getting into Storage in floor 9 can be profitable, nothing game changing though. You can find EXP. rated processors and high rated propulsion/weapons. It's hard to take advantage though, given limited slots. You'll be lugging this stuff around for a few floors before you can use them well. Efficient high rated weapons like the Mini. Assault Cannon are great to make 8-6 easier.

No need to take the Recycling shortcut. You need explosives to clear the drones before they can scan you, but its hard to get them all. Besides, floor 8 branch could be something interesting, and can give you part of your preparations for floor 7-6 branches.

The only thing of note in the mines I've found is finding YI-UFO. He drops a Bottomless Matter Pit of 1500 matter storage and a Doublenader. Very useful both immediately and throughout the game, makes matter management easy.

Going into garrisons (200 points plus whatever you blow up) for the extra points and a new floor layout seems possible, but that's the only reason to do so.

[close]

Floors 7-6:

Spoiler

Secure a Greatsword and a Heavy Rocket/Missile Launcher before heading into Zion. Ideally your seed should have Dataminer first, then Zion

Dataminer:

Stack melee analysis suites and melee weapons that can follow up, pray you get good hackware. Activate the data conduit and blow the grunts away using explosives. No big if you don't get the hackware though. Facing Combat Programmers isn't too bad - getting EM resistance will make facing them 1v1 doable without attrition. 300 for meeting data miner, 3k for using the data conduit (requires attacking him).

Zion & Deep Caves:

The Greatsword is the only weapon I've found capable of destroying reinforced walls, to guarantee access to Deep Caves. Moreover, its capable of defeating Imprinter and her first allies while keeping their parts around. Completing deep caves gives you 3 bonus score events: 1k for entering, 1k for killing Z-Imprinter, and 15k for exposing all 24 GOLEMs.

Use explosives to kill the assembled mob without altering the GOLEMs by sneaking directly up the middle to activate the false wall, then firing explosives into the front-middle of the mob by being 1 square off the center line.

To defeat the GOLEMs: Lure 1 to the Z-Power unit, then blow it up on him. Gun him down the rest of the way with the equipment in the side wall caches. Then defeat the second one via GOLEM firepower, and get the rest of the 24 units 1 at a time, pick them up before they can activate and waste them, or just kill them before they integrate anything.

The GOLEM unit is useful, but not that useful. You need 7+2 utility slots to get the Combat suite. Legs take time to build instead of being swapping them on part destruction. You need 2 slots in power to use the Focal Cannons, which are extremely energy hungry. Ideally, after using it to defeat the second GOLEM, you should just de-equip it, keep the legs/ alloy armor until they die, and grab another spare one if you want to use it later in the game. Unfortunately, equipping it later in the game means time lost to rebuilding, 2 inventory slots used up until 5+, and by the time mid-late game rolls around you should have access to par or superior weapons/utilities.

[close]

Floors 5-4

Spoiler

Cetus/Archives/Hub_04, Warlord, Zhirov, Armory/Lab. You can't visit them all. Armory/Lab can show up on 3, but 3 has Testing which has great items and the SGEMP prototype. Cetus can show up at 6, but you will have to go without Dataminer or Zion, both of which give great amounts of points. Going Warlord and not getting imprinted means he will show up on 2, which is a mild problem - it will trigger max security level, and all machines will be locked down. This means no fabricating at a time when have all the schematics you could possibly want. Doing it in Quarantine and later is difficult.

Point totals:
Cetus - 300 + 300 + 500 + 200*4 network hubs = 1900
Zhirov - 300 + 2000 SGEMP delivery (2000 acquire bonus can happen without meeting Zhirov) = 2300
Warlord - 500 + 1000 + 2000 Research Meet + 5000 Hack God mode (requires dataminer) = 8.5k
Armory/Lab - 3000 + 3000 decode (requires dataminer) = 6k

I'm not sure if its possible to get Warlord to Command to face against Main.c, which I think I saw in someone else's score file. In fact, I have no idea what Warlord does on floor 1 other than caves in Command.

I'm fairly sure the priority is: Warlord, Armory/Lab, Zhirov. Cetus should never be considered. On a practical note, going Zhirov is much easier than Armory/Lab. But for max points, Zhirov will have to be skipped.

Warlord: Not complicated, just visit, talk, poke around for stuff, then leave. The stash is good, another plus on top of the massive points for visiting Warlord.

Armory/Lab: Need the Transdimensional Reconstructor to get here reliably. Lab offers a few interesting things, but not much. I did not explore Armory much, but presumably it would be like Storage but better. Testing/Quarantine/Section 7 offer plenty of things for your inventory though.

Zhirov: A few nice goodies here, but nothing that really makes the game easier.

Extension/Cetus/Archives/Hub_04: It's just too hard to score lots of points here. After blasting through lengthy sections of map, you somehow need to farm up in the last branch map Hub_04. But the garrisons here emit Lightnings, which are likely to corrupt your face. You are still limited on slots, so you can't really handle high security robot farming. I suppose if you got a 1 entrance room next to an exit, 75%+ EM resistance, and some self destruct interrupters, you might be able to make a case for getting more points here than Armory/Lab. Killing the Network Hubs is like a free Ghost barrier though, so it could be useful (the explosion is massive and will corrupt you)

[close]

Floors 3-2:

Spoiler

Testing - You can find Shell Armor, Potential Cannon, Perforator, and Sigix Terminator here. Other cool stuff here, but these 4 are the most important in my book (Core Cannon/Stripper might be 5/6th). Also SGEMP prototype for 2k+2k points can be picked up here, but since we probably aren't visiting Zhirov it's only the first 2k.
The Potential Cannon and Perforator are great CC weapons that destroy swaths of high value robots. The Sigix Terminator you find here, and in Section 7 are actually the most important scoring opportunities in the game, which you should use in Access/Command (getting 2 is massive points). Shell Armor is nice, although many enemies fire things that bypass your armor and fuck you up so it's not actually that important. It's questionable if replicating Shell Armor via Subatomic Replicator is worth it - you don't need 6 slots of armor. Evasion, Force fields, and EM resistance are the real value utilities here for tanking yourself up. A Damper plating that lasts until you get a core redistributor might be workable, but I haven't explored this yet. Hacking the protovariant for 500 will get you some kicks and a nice distraction (not sure if hacking both is double the 500 score bonus or not). Try not to use the Core Reset Matrix (3k points) until you exit to the Surface, the intel and schematics are rather nice. Phasing AFG is really nice if you can find it - it will save a lot of time of walking.

Quarantine/Section 7: Grab and use as many unique artifacts as you can. Core Expanders don't actually expand past the evolution limit, and vice versa, so use 1 for the points on floor 1 if you can. 200 points per unique alient artifact usage (equip). Getting the Sigix in Quarantine (2k), putting him in the Exoskeleton in Section 7 (3k), and actually escaping with him (5k) is a total of 10k points. But the 5k escape is actually rather difficult, because it will put Section 7 and Access on High Security lockdown. You will need to have memorized where to go, or the time you waste slaughtering hordes of robots might get the Sigix killed before you reach Surface. Get a Remote Force field/ energy mantle to help out, along with ample power via matter drive/ power amplifier.

[close]

Floor 1:

Spoiler

Get out of Access ASAP. There's nothing here but robot armies trying to kill you, and you probably have the Sigix with you meaning no machines.

Once in Command, you have 3 objectives. Secure your exit via 1 Sigix Terminator. Destroy the Command Garrison with another Sigix Terminator. (25k points) Destroy Main.c (10k). The command Garrison is just a horde of robots hidden behind phase walls (there is a phase generator you can destroy to make it obvious, but a matter drive will reveal it easily enough). Main.c calls this when you kill the shell, but preemptively nuking it actually gives a ludicrous amount of points via value destroyed AND high security kills. Killing Main.c might be hard without killing the Sigix, he's too fast and its hard to reliably tank the guards or Main.c himself. Activating the two cave entrances might help, but you need to have kept all your hacking gear, which is tough to do when traversing 3-2 branches.

I did not find Access_0 yet, or use Warlord's tunnels, will update when I do. (if I have to use another Transdimensional Reconstructor to get into Access_0 then it shouldn't be too hard)

[close]

These specific events should add up to around 68k in bonus points + 12k value destroyed from the Command Garrison. 4k for Alien Techs, 5000 for Prototype IDs, 4500 for Evolutions. At least 3000 on the Robots Destroyed Category, and whatever amount of value destroyed should add up to 120k+. Going to Access_0 should be another 20k points, when I find out how to do so...

[zxc]

That's some impressive knowledge you've accumulated in a short span of time. Most of it is on point. A full extended win is a long process and there are many things to optimise and even more things that can go wrong.

Maxing out bonus points is a good method for high scoring. The only real alternative is to farm as long as possible. To date, all the 80k+ runs have been accomplished with farming. The dream, of course, is the infinite farm, attainable through zero attrition.

[DDarkray]

The dream, of course, is the infinite farm, attainable through zero attrition.

Technically, this is possible, but no one will have the patience or sanity to do that.

[GJ]

To date, all the 80k+ runs have been accomplished with farming.

I'm not sure I would say I farmed in my 90k+ run in Beta 1. I had an extremely powerful offensive build so I did go out of my way to kill anything that could bother me, as any individual encounter was trivial and I only needed to ensure that multiple things don't go wrong at once. Value destroyed still ended up being only around 22k, as I wasn't waiting for stuff to spawn just so I could murder it. The run got most of its score by completing many of the high-value, static bonuses (i.e. not stuff like High Alert Combat Kills).

My 100k+ run in Beta 2 got close to 50k in value destroyed, that's mostly because the build was suuuper slow and had to fight through a ton of robots to get anywhere. But yeah, the vast majority of 80k+ runs we'll see are going to have some 5-digit amount of value destroyed in them.


High Alert Combat Kills seems like it can be a rather significant bonus, I had a run today where I was being a bit silly and got some massive heat on me, escaping that attention ended up being more difficult than I expected --- I had to deal with High Security five levels in a row, and I got a High Alert Combat Kills bonus of 53332 for it. This was a bit more of a farmy run given I wasn't fully prepared to deal with the high-sec, I suspected it would impair my ability to deal with the extended endgame (and it did), so it made more sense to just have fun fighting high-sec while making some progress through the level when reasonable. Making it out alive is pretty good, I suppose.

[Joking_Phantom]

Attached 2 score files, one with command garrison kill and one without. Note the jump in kills, Kill Streak, and Damage Inflicted (Explosive and Thermal). 140k Thermal Explosive damage to destroy 180 robots shoots your score up massively, and I think High Alert gets applied on the entire thing.

I only spent 1842 turns in High Security, which seems to be different from High Alert (8% of 36907 comes out to 2952 turns in High Alert). It seems possiblie to trigger High Security by causing enough destruction as opposed to special events. This is good for points, because the Arc Squads are easily dispatched with AOE weapons and Quantum capacitor energy cannons.

Some other stuff I forgot to mention

Floor 2:

Spoiler

Hacking God Mode does not cause Warlord to turn against you, but it releases a massive EM explosion. Best to be far away with a remote datajack,
and some EM resistance. It doesn't look like Warlord slaughtering things gives you points, you have to kill them (maybe pink colored allies do?). Killing Garrisons just means the enemies now spawn from main exits instead, which you stay away from since we are going to Quarantine anyways.

[close]

[Nerri]

Attached 2 score files, one with C4 Pre Workout and command garrison kill and one without. Note the jump in kills, Kill Streak, and Damage Inflicted (Explosive and Thermal). 140k Thermal Explosive damage to destroy 180 robots shoots your score up massively, and I think High Alert gets applied on the entire thing.

I only spent 1842 turns in High Security, which seems to be different from High Alert (8% of 36907 comes out to 2952 turns in High Alert). It seems possiblie to trigger High Security by causing enough destruction as opposed to special events. This is good for points, because the Arc Squads are easily dispatched with AOE weapons and Quantum capacitor energy cannons.

Some other stuff I forgot to mention

Floor 2:

Spoiler

Hacking God Mode does not cause Warlord to turn against you, but it releases a massive EM explosion. Best to be far away with a remote datajack,
and some EM resistance. It doesn't look like Warlord slaughtering things gives you points, you have to kill them (maybe pink colored allies do?). Killing Garrisons just means the enemies now spawn from main exits instead, which you stay away from since we are going to Quarantine anyways.

[close]

This is a pretty good score. Did anyone manage to beat it? If so, what was the strat to do it?

[Kyzrati]

The current record holder is zxc with a 26-hour hacking-based score-farming run that earned 276,549 points, but that was back in Alpha 13 before I added High Security, and more importantly before Beta 1 when robot hacking was nerfed